The couple, from Gwinnett County, Ga., were traveling through Burlington on Interstate 40/85 with a 3-year-old child Wednesday afternoon. They were charged by a special operations unit with the N.C. Highway Patrol after what a trooper described as a routine traffic stop.

Leslie Faviola Alvarado, 20, and Jaramillo Rosas Felipe, 27, both of Elmside Village Lane, Norcross, Ga., were stopped Wednesday at 11:53 p.m. on Interstate 40/85 near the 148 mile-marker in Burlington by Trooper K. Ellerbe, a member of the state highway patrol’s Criminal Interdiction Team.

Alvarado and Felipe were each charged with one count of trafficking in methamphetamine, and were each placed in the Alamance County jail Wednesday night under an $800,000 secured bond. Alvarado’s and Felipe’s first court appearance is scheduled for 2 p.m. today.

Sgt. D. Hawkins, sergeant of the Criminal Interdiction Team’s eastern unit, said, “We work on the highways enforcing traffic safety laws,” and specialize in finding drugs, illegal weapons and wanted individuals. “We just happened to be working up in Alamance County when Trooper Ellerbe made that stop.”

Hawkins said the arrest resulted from a routine traffic stop, which Ellerbe made because the couple’s vehicle was weaving in its lane and crossed two feet into the adjacent lane.

Hawkins said Felipe, the driver, said he was tired from driving all the way from Georgia, which Ellerbe found suspicious since it was early afternoon and the couple was traveling southbound on Interstate 40/85 back toward Georgia.

“He also didn’t have a driver’s license,” and only had an ID issued by the Mexican government, Hawkins said. He said the N.C. Highway Patrol isn’t sure of Felipe’s legal status, but the female passenger, Alvarado, did have a valid Georgia driver’s license.

“They had a 3-year-old little girl with them,” who is Alvarado’s daughter, Hawkins said. The more than 1,000 grams of methamphetamine was found in plastic containers wedged behind the child’s car seat in the backseat of the car, he said.

Hawkins said 28 grams or more of methamphetamine is considered trafficking, and warrants obtained Wednesday night stated the couple possessed “400 grams or more” of the drug.

“They had almost triple … the amount,” Hawkins said. “(You) normally don’t see that much.”

Alvarado’s daughter was placed in the care of a relative, Hawkins said, adding that troopers were “trying to make it as less stressful on the little girl as we could.”

He said the Criminal Interdiction Team is in the Special Operations section of the N.C. Highway Patrol, and consists of units in the north, south, east and west parts of the state.

“We have a small unit,” Hawkins said. “The more guys we have doing this, the more criminals we can catch.”

A Mexican photojournalist who left the state he worked in because of threats was among five people found shot to death in a Mexico City apartment this weekend, officials and press freedom advocacy groups said.